Part 26: By Fortune United
"Since Senistraz called us here, anyway, we need to know what you know about the Squaminish, please, Abbie. We cannot have our two dragon riders going insane over a missing ritual." Alistair paced as he talked.
"I know little, I'm afraid. That's my father's book, and he taught me how to read Squaminish… but pretty much everything I know about them is contained in there. I learned nothing more than he did, and he made it a point to carefully record everything. Why do you want to know? What's this about going insane?"
"It would seem that Simon and Blake were betrothed not long after birth." Alistair explained to her.
"What? Why that's wonderful!"
"What? Have you lost your mind?" Blake blurted.
"Have you read the part on marriage in the book?" Abbie pulled the book over to her. "I doubt it."
She opened it up and rifled through the pages. Then she looked at Blake. "You've read it, right?"
"Yes, but it doesn't answer how to fix this."
"Fix it? It's not broken! It's the way of your people." Abbie scowled at the woman cross from her. She'd tried to instill in her a love of her heritage, but it would seem she had failed on that one account. "Didn't I tell you that one day you would have to go to a Gathering and seek your mate from among them, or you would lose your mind? Did you think I was kidding?"
"I thought it was just a superstition until I realized Simon was having visions of me." Blake objected weakly.
"Visions? What kind of visions?" She looked at Simon over her reading spectacles.
He shuffled slightly. "I watched her sometimes. I couldn't wake up out of it or make it stop." A flush ran across his cheeks.
Abbie grinned. "You saw something you enjoyed, I take it."
He blushed more and looked pointedly away from her.
"Well, no need to be ashamed, dear boy. The pair of you are as good as married already, anyway." She grinned at his obvious discomfort, and then lost the grin at Blake's mutinous face. "Blake. Don't let rebellion cheat you of the love you deserve. Let me read to you again about how mates are chosen by the Squaminish. You may find it more enlightening this time than you did when you thought it was silly superstition and backwoods ignorance."
She picked up the book and began to read as the others pulled up chairs to listen.
"I went again to speak with Isimal, this time asking about the way that children are betrothed at birth. He explained the reasons behind it.
"'This is determined by the Oracle. When a baby is born, we consult the Oracle in order to find the person who is destined to be the greatest love of the child's life. We Squaminish believe in Love to the degree that we put it above all other things. We want only the greatest love for our children, so their future spouse is chosen with great care.
"'If you were to have had the greatest love of your life, would you not with the same for your child? There is no splitting of marriages, no unhappy couples in our culture, as abounds in yours. We cannot even imagine a life in which you are not married to your Heart's Mate.
"'We consult the Oracle, and we raise the children in the same clan—but never in the same household. They always know whom they are to marry, and that this is the person they will love the most in life. In our history, not once has there been an unhappy union.'
"'So,' I asked him, 'what happens after they are grown and it's time to marry? What if they decide not to marry?'
"'If they decide not to marry, even if they have not had the Oracle consulted for them nor been betrothed, they will begin to have visions of their Heart's Mate. If they continue to ignore these visions, eventually they will be overtaken by the madness of being disconnected from the other half of themselves.'
"'So as soon as they are married, these visions go away?' I asked him. Curiosity, as you know by now, consumes me in these matters. He simply answered no, so I was forced to ask him more questions. I thought perhaps it would go away (and I hope the gentle reader will forgive my crude word) upon the consummation of the marriage.
"This was not correct, either, according to him. 'It ceases when they perform the Ritual of Sealing, that seals their hearts together as a single unit.'
"'Who teaches them the ritual?'
"'None can teach them the ritual. It must be given to them.'
"'By the parents?'
"'It can be.'
"Despite my continued questions, I gained no more answers from him. Every question I asked was replied to in the same cryptic manner. To this day, I have no knowledge of what the ritual is, or how it is given to couples in their culture. He seemed to find my difficulty in understanding amusing, telling me that I was making more of it than it is. So my curiosity in this area, I suppose, must remain forever unquenched."
"And that's it. That's all. There's nothing more," Abbie told them, closing the book. "It doesn't make sense, but there you have it. Neither marriage nor intercourse is the ritual of Sealing. I don't know what it is, even my father didn't know. Simon and Blake were found on a search for my father, who died with their clan. He had written this book some years before, but had hoped to write another one. He never got the chance to. If he learned the secret, it died with him."
Blake sighed. "So we were cursed by some Fortune-teller to go crazy if we don't find a way to be 'sealed' to each other against our will," she made quoting gestures in the empty air with her fingers. "Great, just great."
"Maybe I don't see it as a curse," Simon said stiffly, his body rigid and trembling. "But I suppose I might see it that way if I were the mage and you were the shit-man."
He stalked swiftly out of the cave, ignoring Velistara, who cried his name.
Blake stared after him with her mouth open in a shocked 'oh!' shape. "Well I… I didn't mean it that way!"
"Blake was unkind," Senistraz noted.